Walk the Talk with Step 12: Staying Sober Through Service

Introduction

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Step Twelve, Alcoholics Anonymous

No words can adequately express the gratitude I feel in my heart for the gifts I have personally received as a result of living in Step Twelve, which compels me to practice the principles of love, tolerance, and service in all of my affairs. Thanks to living in Step Twelve and being of service to the various fellowships to which I belong, it has not been necessary for me to take a drink or a drug since August 25, 1998. The Twelve Step program has given me an extraordinary life, and for that I am forever grateful.

As my personal mission is to carry the message of hope and the miracle of recovery to as many people as possible, making the commitment to write this book to sound a clarion call to action and light a Step Twelve grass fire is long overdue. There is a plague on planet Earth. Alcoholism and addiction to other drugs have reached pandemic proportions globally and have become one of America’s most urgent public health issues. At this very moment, millions are sick and suffering alone in silence without knowledge of the rooms and the transformative healing power of Twelve Step recovery.

The battle against the epidemic of addiction and alcoholism is ongoing. New tools are needed to inspire those in recovery to heed the Twelfth Step call, and it is my goal for this book to give Twelve Steppers a time-tested way to take the hands of as many alcoholics and addicts as possible and help them along the path to the spiritual awakening and life of service—culminating in Step Twelve—that ensures long-term recovery.

A friend once told me a story about his grand sponsor (his sponsor’s sponsor) who had been a guest at one of Bill W.’s dinner parties in New York. In order to engage Bill in conversation, he asked Bill, What’s the most important part of the program?, and without a second’s hesitation, Bill replied, Carry the message—Step Twelve. Bill went on to quip, Never be so anonymous that it prevents you from helping someone. I know a fellow in Brooklyn who is so anonymous, I’m the only one who knows he’s in the program.

One way or another, every alcoholic and addict will indeed carry the message—either by working Steps One through Eleven and then living in Step Twelve, or by becoming a statistic with a toe tag. At this moment in history—after eighty years of expansion of Twelve Step programs into well over one hundred nations—the toe tags still vastly outnumber the Twelve Steppers. Many of us believe this is due to the decline of service and the Twelfth Step call.

Each day thousands of addicts and alcoholics who are potential new members of our Twelve Step societies are released from detox and treatment facilities with little or no understanding about the vital nature of surrounding themselves with the loving wall of humanity found in the fellowship and of incorporating Step Twelve service into their lives in order to maintain long-term sobriety posttreatment. This condemns far too many of them to the revolving door of drunk tanks and rehabs—and for the vast majority, a trip to the morgue.

Privacy laws prevent us from marching into hospitals to work with drunks and addicts in the manner of Bill W., Dr. Bob, and the other founders in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). As a result of their aggressive Twelve Stepping, our program flourished as it reached its peak in membership and efficacy over the decades that followed the publication of the Big Book in 1939, continuing until well into the 1960s. Today the efficacy of our program is in remission. The walk from the hospital, the jail, and rehabs to the rooms of recovery is a journey of a million miles without the fellowship of the spirit reaching out its hand to guide our sick friends on their road to recovery.

As you’ll read in my story, during my third trip to rehab, a group of men from AA regularly brought meetings into the treatment center where I was in a thirty-day lockdown program. The day I came out of treatment, one of those men had travelled two hours by train so that he could be at the door of the treatment facility to greet me and shepherd me into the rooms and the fellowship. His name was Edgar W., a man with nearly forty years of sobriety whom I considered a saint. His father had been a member of Bill W.’s first AA group on Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights. Edgar W., who became one of my sponsors, instilled in me the concept that once I have completed the first eleven Steps, my purpose, duty, and fulltime job is to Twelfth Step everyone I meet.

It was also Bill W.’s emphatic admonition that our primary purpose is to be of maximum service to God and everyone around us, and to practice daily the art of the Twelfth Step call.

The Fifth Tradition tells us that the primary purpose of every Twelve Step fellowship is to carry the message to those who still suffer; yet in today’s busy, complicated world, too many in the fellowships seem to have retreated from that position as they chant attraction not promotion. All too often, we sit in our church basements and say let them come and find us. As a result, the epidemic tide of addiction rises as membership in Twelve Step fellowships decreases.

This book explores, redefines, and reinvigorates a passion for Step Twelve and the art of the Twelfth Step call. My hope and prayer is that it can embolden the faithful old guard while inspiring sponsors and their sponsees, new members, patients in treatment, and addiction professionals—a new generation of Twelve Step soldiers—to suit up with zeal, walk the talk, and carry the message to all of those who are still sick and suffering.

Since the heart of the Twelfth Step call is telling your story, I begin the book with my story, which makes up the three chapters of part 1, following the traditional formula—what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now. It’s not only a tale of drinking, drugging, and eventual miraculous recovery, including my escape from the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. More importantly, it’s the story of the gifts and miracles I have experienced as a result of living in Step Twelve, gleaned from many years of active service for home groups, intergroups, clubhouses, and roundups; from travelling North America performing the role of Bill W. in national tours of the live stage production Pass It On . . . An Evening with Bill W. & Dr. Bob; and from serving as a Twelve Step advocate and as a circuit speaker at meetings, conferences, workshops, conventions, schools, hospitals, jails, military installations, rehabs, halfway houses, drug courts, and DUI courts from coast to coast in the United States and Canada.

In part 2, I tell the story of the beginnings of AA through the first three Twelfth Step calls: Ebby Thatcher’s visit with Bill W., Bill W.’s visit with Dr. Bob, and Bill and Bob’s visit with AA number three, Billy D. I also explore the maturation of the Twelve Step program under the guidance of the early members who made the Twelfth Step call the keystone in the evolution and growth of AA, saving millions of lives worldwide and serving as the model for dozens of Twelve Step programs that reach people with addictions to everything from heroin to gambling, as well as their family members, through Al-Anon and Nar-Anon.

Part 3 includes information on how to conduct a Twelfth Step call (and overcome barriers to service work unique to the twenty-first century); the importance of sponsorship as a necessary requirement for working Step Twelve; why Step Twelve is the holy grail of recovery, the culmination of working all of the preceding eleven Steps; and a discussion about the vital importance of living a life of service beyond helping alcoholics and addicts.

Part 4 is devoted to testimonials from Step Twelve warriors who have dedicated themselves to a life of service. Stories of recovering people are also sprinkled throughout the book to show, rather than just tell, how these ideas and principles are put into practice in the myriad ways that reflect the amazing variety of people in Twelve Step programs.

Twelfth Step work has become my mission in life: my passion, avocation, and vocation. The glue that holds me together. Twelfth Step and service work beyond the program brings me a quality of unspeakable joy and a peace that passes all understanding as it saves my life over and over again.

In the words of Bill W.: Sobriety is . . . only the first gift of the first awakening. If more gifts are to be received, our awakening has to go on. (Bill W., December 1957)

I am on fire with the desire to pass on to others my passion for Step Twelve—the key to the kingdom of life beyond our wildest dreams.

PART I

My Story

. . . in which I cheat death, return from the gates of the hell of addiction, and find the spiritual solution in the Twelve Step program that allowed me to live a life of service in Step Twelve

1

What It Was Like

Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of working all twelve of the Steps, we are compelled to carry our message to those who still suffer, passing on to others the gift that was freely given to us.

We carry the message that we have found a spiritual solution to our common problem and then we pass on our knowledge of the Twelve Steps, which leads us to the spiritual solution.

The first weapon in our Step Twelve tool kit is sharing our personal stories of drinking and recovery. Often when we tell our stories to a sick and suffering friend, it is the first time they have ever heard someone speaking from personal experience about what they have been going through and carrying the good news that we have found the way out. Through sharing our own experience, strength, and hope, we gain their confidence, they come to trust us, and they listen to what we have to say.

As Dr. Bob describes his first encounter with Bill W., He was the first living human with whom I had ever talked, who knew what he was talking about in regard to alcoholism from actual experience. In other words, he talked my language. He knew all the answers, and certainly not because he had picked them up in his reading. (Alcoholics Anonymous 2001, 180)

This is my story—to the best of my recollection. If anyone has more accurate information as to my whereabouts between 1978 and 1998, please let me know. I was in a blackout for most of those twenty years.

I don’t know if I was born an alcoholic, but I sure could have used a drink the first day of kindergarten.

My name is Gary K. and I am a recovered alcoholic and drug addict, formerly of the hopeless, demoralized variety. I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you with certainty that the answers will come when you walk the talk, do the work that is yours to do, and get your own house in order.

As a direct result of turning my life over to the care of God, clearing away the wreckage of the past, living in Step Twelve, sponsoring others, volunteering for service, and surrounding myself with the loving wall of humanity that I find in the various Twelve Step fellowships to which I belong, it has not been necessary for me to take a drink or a drug since August 25, 1998. Twelve Step recovery has given me an extraordinary life, and for that I am forever grateful.

Today I am happy, joyous, and free from alcohol, pot, poppers, hashish, opium, cocaine, Percodan, Percocet, Vicodin, ketamine, Quaaludes, morphine, IV heroin, and crack. I am also a recovering sex addict, debtor, and overeater.

I grew up in Canton, Ohio, just south of Akron, the birthplace of Twelve Step recovery. It was in Akron, just blocks from Dr. Bob’s house, that a police officer stood on my face for the very first time during a drunk driving incident.

I arrived on this planet kicking and screaming on November 7, 1960, the day John F. Kennedy was elected president. I was so terrified of being alive and trapped in a body that I didn’t talk for three years. When I finally spoke, my first word was pocketbook and my father remarked, Whatever that means, it can’t be good.

My name at birth was William Joseph Weaver Jr.—or Bill W. as my sponsor once pointed out—which may offer some explanation as to why I have become a fervent Twelve Step evangelist.

My birth parents were uneducated, illiterate alcoholics. There was constant domestic violence in the home of my birth. At the age of one, God did for me what I could not do for myself—I was rescued by Child Protective Services and spared from living life as Billy Joe Weaver. The authorities turned me over to the care of Reverend Foreman, a Methodist minister, who placed me into the loving adoptive home of a saintly couple, Bruce and Mary Evelyn, who gave me my current surname.

Bruce and Mary Evelyn met during their freshman year of high school in 1939 and continued dating all through World War II, even when Bruce was overseas serving on the underwater demolition team for the U.S. Navy. Neither of them ever dated anyone else, and they never spent a night apart during their sixty-plus years of marriage. Never once did they raise their voices in anger—not to one another or to anyone else.

From the day World War II ended until the day they died in their eighties, every Friday night they played cards with the same group of friends, ate pizza, drank Coca Cola, and laughed until the wee hours. They didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t gossip, and wouldn’t say shit if they had a mouthful of it. They were kind, hard-working, and loyal; they loved God. And they both volunteered for service in the community, at the schools I attended, and at their church where they never missed a Sunday service. Bruce was an honest used car salesman, football fan, and avid golfer. Mary Evelyn was a stay-at-home mother, a painter, and a poet.

They intuitively and naturally lived the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps without ever needing to read the Big Book.

I also had an adopted sister who had different birth parents. She grew up as normal as one could be. As an adult, she held down the same job for many years; entered into a healthy, stable marriage; became a wonderful mother; and raised two remarkable children. She could take a drink or leave it.

My sister and I were raised by the same loving parents, with the same values, in the same spiritually driven household, but unlike my sister I was born with a potentially fatal, progressive disease of mind, body, and spirit—a kind of brain disorder that coaxed me from our idyllic, wholesome, loving home and led me down a dark, twisted road to a life of terrifying depravity, insanity, and demoralization, ultimately depositing me at the gates of death.

I am living proof that, rather than being a moral failing, addiction is a disease—just like cancer or diabetes or tuberculosis, addiction and alcoholism are diseases. The disease doesn’t care where we were raised, who raised us, what side of the tracks we grew up on, how much money or education we did or didn’t have, what color our skin is, or whether or not we were raised with spiritual guidance.

I was born without an ENOUGH button and with my MORE button stuck in the on position. The disease of MORE began to manifest when I was ten years old. I developed my first obsessive ritual that involved my childhood drugs of choice: sugar, carbs, fear, and fantasy. Each day after school, I would walk